There is absolutely nothing wrong with women who want to pastor a church. They should not be suspect as man hating, radical leftists or politically liberal. Their desire to walk with God publicly and lead others through life’s heartaches and hard times is sincere and noble. And women whose love of the spiritual life burns from the depth of their souls should be honored, encouraged, supported, and permitted. Instead, these few women are made out to be shamed, as if they should feel ashamed of their consecrated service.
The big news coming out of this summer’s Southern Baptist Convention was the reclarification that women are to remain silent in the church. Nothing new here, considering the organization once proclaimed its annual mission was to convert all Jews to Christianity. ‘What Hitler couldn’t do with The Holocaust, the SBC tries to finish.’ Isn’t it the same thing, just perhaps less cruel—destroying God’s chosen people? No, converting a whole people to Christianity has always been cruel one way or another.
And the same principle is involved in banning women from pastor positions. It’s more sinister than clarifying church policy.
What the ban on female pastors means is: women are sub human, a part of man yet never to be man’s equal. A teaching by the Apostle Paul is used to prove the point. According to the Bible, Paul once instructed a specific Early Christian church to keep their women silent in church matters. Through the centuries, however, other Christian denominations didn’t interpret the teaching as a must-do for women in order to keep them suppressed in leadership matters and in so assuming silent in family, home, finances and politics. (Why couldn’t women vote or hold elected positions from the beginning of this nation? Because women were considered air heads with no significant thoughts or ideas.)
What some men don’t get about women (or Blacks and other subsets of humanity) is women know they are human beings. Some men, given our collective history and goings-on today, seriously don’t agree. For a couple of centuries, the South used Bible to maintain slavery, saying according to scripture some people are just meant to be slaves. There isn’t a human being on God’s green earth who is meant to be a slave, an unpaid brutalized servant.
Great falling away
There is one solution to the SBC policy against women pastors. Change denominations. A few females may shed some tears in the process of tearing away from a church that has brought a life of joy and comfort, one that for the most part provided solutions and answers to every question. It’s as familiar as Christmas, grandma, fried chicken, banana pudding, dinner on the ground and singing old-time gospel hymns like I’ll Fly Away and Fill My Way Everyday with Love.
But when a branch of Christianity still believes half of humanity cannot serve as official church leaders? That’s just plain wrong. A study of Christianity will show major changes in thought and customs in the past 2,000 years. Let’s call these huge changes what they were and are today: a reality check. Times change us, often for the better.
The beauty is Christianity remains a major world religion. It is one that teaches spiritual faith in circumstances we don’t understand, kindness toward all people especially strangers, and (my personal favorite) loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.
The red words in the Bible should be considered the final say on matters of controversy. The red words say nothing about man’s superiority to women, women’s subservience to men, homosexuality, or abortion.
The problem, it seems, is what was not said in red.
[Psst. I’m thinking Jesus wouldn’t have a problem with women pastors. Seems so insignificant in the Big Picture.]